Dialogic History

Infinity Blade is the first full fledged game to be released for iOS (iPod Touch/iPhone/iPad) using Epic’s Unreal engine. The console/PC version of the engine powers popular games like the Mass Effect Series, the Unreal Tournament series, the Gears of War series, Borderlands and Batman: Arkham Asylum. It is known for being an AAA game engine used in big budget games as well as a few indie games. This pedigree is important to place Infinity Blade as, in addition to the engine’s console roots, Epic released a tech demo called Epic Citadel to showcase the Unreal 3 engine on iOS devices. So, before anyone had even played the game there were graphical expectations. Players were looking for an almost console quality graphical experience and hoping for a game to go along with it. Gameplay-wise it borrows from fighting games and RPGs. The character progresses through a linear series of battles against single opponents. Travel between battles is initiated by the player  but the character is only fully controlled by the player during the battles. experience points (XP) are accrued to upgrade the character and gold is gathered to upgrade weapons. Battles themselves involve reducing the opponents health to zero using attacks, blocks, dodges and parries, similar to games like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, though the camera position (over the player character’s shoulder) if more akin to action or RPG games.

Chronotope

As with Road Blaster, Infinity Blade uses time and space in an interesting way, both to tailor the game to the iOS platform and for gameplay mechanics. The game is played from the perspective of successive sons in a lineage of knights trying to defeat the God King. The game starts with the player character vowing to avenge his father (spoiler: killed by the God King), overlooking a crumbling castle on a nearby hill. The knight works his way through the castle defeating the God King’s minions. The bulk of gameplay is in these confrontations. They are manually initiated by the player and, when so initiated, health bars appear. The knight must reduce the enemy’s health to zero. This is done by swiping a finger across the touch screen to swing the sword to attack or parry or tapping the edges of the screen or a shield iconto dodge and block. During these fights analyzing the game space and timing movements is key to victory. Blocks and parries must be performed at the right time and in the right direction or the knight will take damage. During the fights both the knight and the enemy remain stationary, only trading blows. Between fights, however, hotspots in the world will show up, showing where the knight can move next. tapping a hot spot initiates an animation, moving the knight to the next location or battle. There is no free movement in the game, except moving the view, and this is how gold and items are gathered. At all the stops and during some of the walking scenes the camera can be moved and tapping gold bags seen in the game world will give their contents to the player. Some gold bags are only glimpsed briefly and must be grabbed then, or will be missed. In this way, the player must pay attention to a linearly confined space to get the best character bonuses. Additionally the various pieces of armour that the player can buy have bonuses giving more gold, or having bonus items like health potions or pieces of armour appear instead of gold. If the knight dies during any of these fights, the player can go back to the last check point or restart the castle. Once the player initiates the battle with the God King, however, death is permanent and means restarting the castle as a descendant of the slain knight. keeping all of his XP and armour. The God King starts the game at level 50, so the player is meant to die the first few times. Additionally, each time the God King is slain the he becomes stronger on the next playthrough, effectively making the came an infinite loop. This approach allows the developers to make a relatively short game in a small space remain compelling, since the battles are the bulk of the gameplay and they get stronger each playthrough and the knight gets better gear. So, the game is a linear, constrained experience, in an essentially infinite cycle, the bulk of which, gameplay-wise, is in battles where the player must react to timed cues from enemies to be successful.

Interaction

Infinity Blade is another iOS game that plays to the strengths of the touch screen. Interaction is by tapping and swiping the screen, which feels very natural for the sword fights (though fingers can get in the way of viewing the screen) and the game is presented in third person, so it’s almost as if the knight is a sword puppet who follows the player’s on-screen actions. Additionally, by having the option to look around during and collect things walking scenes, when there is no real control exercised over the knight, it makes these scenes feel less like static cinematics and more engaging.

Dialogic History

Road Blaster is a historical relic. It was originally an arcade game and is completely made up of pre-rendered animated scenes. Scenes play and, at certain points, on-screen directions pop up, turn left, turn right, brake, or turbo. There is a narrow window in which to perform the action which, if accomplished, will trigger the next scene. If the player fails it switches to footage of the car getting destroyed. This game comes from a pedigree of Full Motion Video (FMV) games like Dragon’s Lair and Sewer Shark. These sorts of games were popular in arcades, then in homes when CD-ROM based systems were new, as it was the first time large amounts of video were possible in home console games. In that regard FMV games provide a level of immersion not previously possible by having full games made up of animated footage or live actors. Now, however, the game archaic and nostalgic. Even more nostalgic are the visuals, Road Blaster is an anime game (Japanese animation) and has a similar look to Robotech or Gundam.  So, Road Blaster is nostalgia, through and through, making an iPhone version of it an interesting case as it is a historical relic played on one of the newest platforms for gaming. It even takes advantage of the iPhone/iPod Touch’s gyroscope for control (more on that later). Despite the archaic nature of the game it stands up well as an iPhone game.

Chronotope

Space and time in Road Blaster are incredibly constrained. The game gives no control over them whatsoever. The player must perform specific actions at specific times to progress the game. This lack of control is necessary since the game is completely made of pre-rendered scenes that are triggered by the player. Essentially gameplay comes down to “press the right button to not die”. The player has a small window within which to perform the action shown on-screen. If performed correctly the game continues. This method works because the transitions are very smooth and the time windows within which the player has to act are very short so quick reactions are quickly rewarded with continued gameplay. This smoothness also comes from the control method, covered in the next section.

Interactivity/Gameplay/Perspective

Thomas H. Apperley cites the platform on which a game appears as being hugely important to the generic analysis of a game, and while I disagree with his generalization, I think it holds true for the iPhone/iPod Touch. Where home consoles (especially when Apperley was writing; in 2006, before the release of the Nintendo Wii) do not have marked differences in game options the iPhone/iPod touch does. It features a 3 axis gyroscope and a multitouch display with no buttons. Road Blaster uses the gyroscope and touch controls. The game presents a car dashboard with a steering wheel and a throttle lever. Tilting the device from side to side will move the steering wheel accordingly, though if no on-screen prompts are present the car will not turn. Touching the throttle allows it to be slid forward for turbo or back for brake. The responsiveness of these controls, even if no action is shown in the game, mask the linear nature of the game, and the tilt controls greatly enhance the experience. When a turn signal appears jerking the device left or right will initiate the next sequence and the physical action corresponds well with the game’s timing and smooth transitions. In this way fluid controls mask the linearity of the game and make it an engaging experience.

Dialogic History

Super Crate Box is an intentional throwback to old arcade games. The game is structured the same as Mario Bros., enemies fall from the top of the level and travel in straight lines, reversing direction at walls, until they fall into the pit at the bottom, only to fall back down and repeat the process. Just like Mario it is your job to dispatch the enemies or avoid them (touching an enemy kills you), though the ultimate goal of Super Crate Box is collection of crates.

The Crate collection takes its cues from games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and the Battlefield series in the form of unlocks. The game keeps track of the total number of crates you have collected, even though the number collected during a single life is what determines your progress through the levels. At certain overall milestones new weapons are unlocked and immediately accessible.

The art style of the game is in keeping with the “nouveau retro” aesthetic of many recent arcade games. The graphics are simple and in the style of 8-bit or 16-bit games, but are drawn in a contemporary style and use more advanced animations and subtle effects like shading.

The Chronotope

Super Crate Box pits time and space against one another. In order to progress you must collect crates. They appear one at a time, randomly around the level. At the same time enemies patrol the level and if left alone will reach the bottom. Enemies that reach the bottom and return from the top are given a dramatic speed boost. Additionally, every time a crate is collected you are randomly given a weapon, so you might go from having a mini-gun to a pistol after collecting a crate. Thus to perform successfully you must navigate the space while avoiding enemies, but ensure that enemies are not given enough time to reach the bottom and return. The longer you play the more enemies appear, making crate collection and enemy control increasingly difficult. The frantic nature of the chronotope is the key gameplay mechanic in Super Crate Box, bringing all the other elements together for a frantic, challenging experience.

Interactivity/Perspective/Gameplay Mode

Super Crate Box controls is a 2D sidescroller and controls as such. You can move left and right, you can jump and you can shoot your weapon. The interactivity is defined by what you cannot control: your choice of weapon. You must collect crates to score points, unlock things and ultimately win, but each crate collected changes your weapon so you constantly have to adjust your play style. Using mines is very different from a bazooka, the latter having a large blast radius and the former requiring timing to have enemies trigger active mines. In the same way the katana is very different from the bazooka, the latter necessitating long range attacks due to its blast radius and the former being a melee weapon. The ridiculous pace of the game means you must constantly be aware of your weapon and adjusting your playstyle accordingly.

It comprises three broad categories that are intentionally not broken down further. The ideas come from Mikhael Bakhtin’s work on the novel, as well as much more recent game studies.

Dialogic History

In Bakhtin’s essay, “The Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse”,  he outlines how the novel, as a genre, is made up of older genres, saying “What was created was a new and large multi-genred genre, one which included in itself various types of dialogues, lyrical songs, letters, speeches, descriptions of countries and cities, short stories and so forth. It was an encyclopedia of genres. (Bakhtin, p. 65).

This idea works equally well for video games, at least to trace their history. A given game will be made up of aspects of other media (film, literature, comics, etc.) as well as older games. This is helpful to consider first when analyzing a game because it situates the game within the video game form.

The Chronotope

Michael Holquist, editor of the English version of Bakhtin’s book, “The Dialogic Imagination”, describes the chronotope as “a unit of analysis for studying texts according to the ratio and nature of the temporal and spatial categories represented.” (Bakhtin, p.425) This concept can be applied directly to video games. All games have representations of space and time that are related and, after the dialogic history of a game, the chronotope shapes the game for the player.

Perspective

Video games are fundamentally different from other forms of media and while dialogic history and the chronotope can be supplanted from Bakhtin and used to analyze games effectively, interactivity is what sets games apart and must be considered. I’ve chosen to use “perspective” for this analysis and the perspective is the top level of interactivity, how the player sees themselves and the interactive world. Perspective is last in the three categories because it is informed both by the dialogic history and to a greater degree by the chronotope.

Bibliography

Bakhtin, M. (2008). The dialogic imagination : four essays (17th ed.). Austin: University of Texas Press.